I’m looking for factual answers so I put this here in FQ.
In the video link below, vehicle 1 is driving on a 2-lane road. Other vehicles in the adjacent lane are stopped at a crosswalk. As vehicle 1 approaches the crosswalk, a pedestrian suddenly appears from behind the stopped vehicles and is running across the street. Vehicle 1, unable to stop in time, hits the pedestrian.
Here is the video. WARNING, the video is graphic. The pedestrian is hit hard.
Who is at fault here?
Maybe this should be moved to IMHO, because I don’t think there are any factual answers.
Anyway, I believe that both the car and the pedestrian share blame. The car driver, for not seeing traffic slowing down and stopping; and the pedestrian, for believing that all traffic can stop on a dime, and not looking when crossing the empty lane.
But that’s just my opinion; hence my recommendation for IMHO.
I’m an engineer, not a lawyer, but this seems like one of those “it depends” type of questions that requires some legal interpretation instead of just being a question of legal fact. So, off to IMHO we go! (from FQ)
The UK Highway Code has the rules: (rules, not law)
At all crossings. When using any type of crossing you should
That’s just a brief extract but I think a judge would probably find the pedestrian in the video mostly to blame.
Again, I am not a lawyer, but my understanding of it is that, in the U.S. at least, there are 50 states and 50 sets of laws on the subject.
There are two different legal principles involved. The first is that the driver has a responsibility not to hit someone. The crosswalk had no visibility due to the presence of the truck, but the driver just blew through the crosswalk anyway, which was irresponsible on the driver’s part. The second is that if a pedestrian jumps out in front of traffic in such a manner that even a careful driver would be unable to stop in time, then the pedestrian is at fault. It seems to me that both are in play here.
Many states assign fault based on percentages. If it is legally determined that the driver was 60 percent at fault and the pedestrian was 40 percent (numbers rectally generated just for demonstration) then if the pedestrian suffered $100,000 in damages, the driver would only be responsible for 60 percent of that.
Some states don’t assign percentages at all. If the pedestrian is even partially at fault, which they appear to be here, then they get nothing out of that $100,000.
And finally, some states are basically “no fault” states. The pedestrian would go through their own no-fault insurance to recover damages.
That’s my non-lawyer understanding of it, for what it’s worth. I could be wrong.
You don’t pass a car that’s stopped at a crosswalk. Period. End of story.
Yeah, the traffic travelling in the same direction as you has stopped at the crossing for some reason. Why not assume that the reason is a pedestrian crossing the road.
Edit: although, looking at it again, the pedestrians on the left are waiting for the light to change and it is impossible to tell how long the driver has had a green light. So maybe it just looks to the driver as though the truck is slow to pull away at the change of lights.
This. Crosswalks are sacrosanct.
It may look like that…but then a smarter driver would wonder why the truck is slow to pull away. Maybe there’s some kind of cross traffic coming, like an ambulance, fire truck, cop…or pedestrian. Blasting out into an intersection when you can’t see what’s out there is asking for trouble.
Re: the scenario the OP linked to, pretty much that exact thing happened in Ann Arbor about a decade ago:
The crosswalk has a pedestrian-activated crossing signal that flashes yellow lights at drivers to alert them that a pedestrian might be crossing. Drivers are allowed to proceed if there’s no pedestrian crossing or waiting to cross, so the light isn’t particularly legally binding. In this case, both westbound lanes and one eastbound lane were stopped, but one eastbound lane was open. A driver hustled through the crosswalk in the open eastbound lane, and the pedestrian - blocked from view because of the stopped eastbound cars - entered that open lane just before the driver did.
The pedestrian was struck and killed, and the driver was sentenced to 3-15 years. Granted, there were other factors, most notably the car traveling at 49 MPH shortly before the crash (speed limit is 35 MPH).
Damn, that was a hard hit. Hope the pedestrian recovers.
In the UK, our pedestrian crossings are either marked with stripes on the road but no traffic lights, or are traffic light controlled but no bars on the road. I believe this helps to remove some ambiguity. If you have a green light, you have priority and are not expected to stop and wait for pedestrians (though obviously you should give way if they are in your path, duh). On that basis I would put most of the fault with the pedestrian here. But the driver could have approached more cautiously, and will regret not doing so for a long time.
If the traffic to the right was stopped at a green light for no reason other than to allow the pedestrian to cross against the light, the lead vehicle there shares a portion of the blame too. Making up your own rules for priority only works if everyone in the vicinity complies with them.
Really. If that’s not the law, it should be. Or at least “proceed with extreme caution and don’t blast on by like you’re the only person in the universe who matters.”
Not if the crosswalk is traffic light controlled, as in this case. In my opinion. Otherwise, in plenty of cities road traffic would progress even less than it does now. But yes, more caution and less speed than this driver showed is still advisable.
Did not watch the vid, the descriptions so far suffice for my point.
True. Reasons for slow pull aways include driver was yakking on the phone or texting or daydreaming. Trucks are inherently slow to get moving due to manual transmissions, weak engines versus weight, etc.
Yes, a highly prudent driver doesn’t look at one vacant lane and one lane not moving as they come up on a red-just-became-green light as “Oh boy, a chance to pass a whole bunch of stopped cars at high speed. Ima stomp on it!”. And doubly so if the intersection arrangement and vehicle sizes and shapes are such that their sightlines to left and right are limited.
OTOH, braking aggressively while approaching a just-turned-green light on the chance your parallel-lane traffic might be waiting for something unseen is a great way to set up a different accident as nobody behind you will expect that maneuver and you may well be rear-ended.
A highly prudent pedestrian does not stand curb- / kerb-side looking at one lane of stopped traffic and one empty lane into which they have no upstream visibility and decide to run across the intersection as his own signal is showing whatever is the local symbology for “You’re almost out of time to cross.”
When two hasty impatient people encounter one another, shit happens with alarming frequency. And sometimes alarming severity. Deciding who was more hasty, more impatient, and less insightful than the situation demanded of them is the business of the courts.
At least within the USA, the “sacrosanctness” of crosswalks varies wildly both by state law and by average driver attitude. And those two are not always completely congruent even within any given state.
Even in very ped-friendly California where I learned to drive, you cannot step out into traffic into a crosswalk against your signal and expect the law and/ or magick to freeze the oncoming traffic so you can proceed in absolute safety. Even the Law of the Land bows to the Laws of Physics.
Boy, that was hard to watch…especially because it’s in that silly Instagram format where you can’t pause or rewind, so you have to rewatch the whole thing over and over in order to study the critical seconds leading up.
I can see why people would be upset at the driver, but it doesn’t look like they are going crazy fast (maybe 25-30 max), which would be the one factor in my opinion. Figure out their speed from the frame rate and distance, and if they were speeding, they get part of the blame.
Otherwise, it looks exactly like a scene that plays out in urban NJ thousands of times a day: car driving at the speed limit approaches the umpteenth intersection of the day, big truck not moving in right lane, light green, car keeps moving…except this time a pedestrian ran across the crosswalk.
We don’t stop at all crosswalks in NJ without pedestrians present–we do, however, yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. And in urban traffic like that, I find it hard to imagine that a driver who has gone through forty similar intersections that morning, with varying kinds of traffic, would slow down at each intersection on the slight chance that a pedestrian with a death wish is running across the street.
It’s a tragic situation, but I can’t see the driver bearing any more responsibility than to carry the lifelong memory of the terrible event–the pedestrian wasn’t walking; they ran into the street like a fool. Of course, that is not a legal answer to the OP, just my opinion (this is in IMHO now, so I offered it).
It’s like when you hear of a friend getting T-boned by a person running a red light…do you now start slowing down before every green light, just in case? Probably only for a few days. But perhaps you become more vigilant in certain setups, such as when you arrive at a fresh green light at speed. Likewise an experienced driver ought to be slowing down when seeing the right lane stopped. With a box truck stopped there, I’d just figure they were slow to start or messing with their phone.
This video is nightmare material, and I can’t smugly say I would drive better than that person.
One thing about why the traffic in the right lane is stopped, is that the truck might be turning right at that intersection and might be stopped because of pedestrians crossing that other street, not the street that vehicle 1 is on.
Here in California, pedestrians in crosswalks always have right of way over vehicular traffic, even if they’re crossing against the light. But in this blind situation I’m wondering how much responsibility the pedestrian would have.
If the light has just turned green, i do look to see if incoming traffic is going to stop in time. I’ve avoided being t-boned by a car racing through a red light once, and seen another car be t-boned in exactly that situation.
I don’t want to watch the video. Does this take place at a stand-alone crosswalk, or at an intersection?
At an intersection, but it’s a T intersection where the other street is to the right of the traffic flow. Vehicle 1 is in the left lane, so there’s no turning for him.
Ouch, that’s hard.
I once stopped at a red light in NYC. While i was stopped, a little old lady with a cane started walking across the street. Right in front of my car, she stumbled and fell. Shortly thereafter, my light turned green, and immediately, all the cars behind me started honking, because you don’t wait to go at intersections in NYC.
Not being a psychopath, i kept my foot on the brake, and eventually another pedestrian came and helped the lady to her feet. At that point, the cars behind me could see why i hadn’t moved, and stopped honking. I managed to move before the light cycled again, so it couldn’t have been very long, but it felt like an eternity. There was only one lane in each direction, so no one was able to drive around me. I guess that’s a good thing.
I think the answer here depends on details i can’t know without actually watching, and i don’t want to watch. So I’ll just reiterate that state laws very quite a lot about the details, and this case sounds like it would go to a jury, which would decide the “matter of fact” as to who was at fault under the relevant state laws.
The approaching driver need not brake aggressively as a matter of habit, but they best be prepared for it. This can include modest braking, which shouldn’t be a problem for following drivers (and also positions the driver’s foot on the brake pedal, facilitating a more rapid emergency-braking response if required).
I’m not going to watch a Graphic video but if the pedestrian is in the crosswalk it’s 100% definitely the drivers fault. They should face fill civil and legal penalties (causing death by dangerous driving or whatever the equivalent is in that jurisdiction)
If a car is stopped at a pedestrian crossing you should absolutely assume it’s because they are waiting for a pedestrian. If you barrel past them it’s entirely expected you’ll hit a pedestrian.